


sorry takes time

by FyreLily



Category: RWBY
Genre: (not really but I just wanted to be safe), Eye Injury, Fluff and Angst, Gen, How Do I Tag, I'm Bad At Tagging, Light Angst, Oscar Pine Needs a Hug, Oscar gets cool steampunky eye effects, Ozpin finally fucking apologizes, Time Shenanigans, aaaaa v8 c2 is tomorrow, dont worry he is okay, everyone is yelling at oscar oh no, everyone yells at oscar oh no, haha wizard of oz references go brrr, oscar unlocks his semblance!!, tell me if i forgot any tags, unfortunately they hurt a little but that will go away soon, welp, yay!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-14
Updated: 2020-11-14
Packaged: 2021-03-09 18:55:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27551137
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FyreLily/pseuds/FyreLily
Summary: Oscar lied. And as always, lying has consequences.However, these consequences do not usually result in all of his friends being frozen and time refusing to budge.---i really wanted to call this "frozen II: electric boogaloo"
Relationships: Oscar Pine & Everyone, Ozpin & Oscar Pine
Comments: 13
Kudos: 80





	sorry takes time

**Author's Note:**

> haiiii it's me again! idk if this counts as fluff but i think it does. v8 c2 tomorrow, yay!! hope you enjoy this!

“You… lied to us?”

Oscar cringes at Yang’s words. That… sounds bad. Especially when he thinks about what Oz did. “I… I guess so, but it’s not fair to just call me a liar like that! After last time… well, I didn’t know how you’d react, and besides, I still had stuff that I needed to work out with Oz on my own before I could-”

“That doesn’t change the base of the matter,” Yang accuses. “You didn’t tell us that he was back!”

Weiss crosses her arms and glares at Oscar. “Don’t you think that’s something we might want to know?”

Oscar tries to defend himself, but he’s interrupted. By Nora. “Oscar… we agreed on no more lies or secrets.”

Now  _ that  _ feels like a slap in the face. Of course they agreed on no secrets! But how was he supposed to tell them when he didn’t even know for sure that they wouldn’t attack him?

“Oscar, are you going to say something?” questions Blake.

Oh, so now they want to know what he thinks? “Every time I try to defend myself, you guys just interrupt me and accuse me more! Can’t you see that I’m trying to-”

“Trying to what, explain why you lied?” Ren spits.

“YES!!” Oscar exclaims, throwing his hands up.

“Guys, calm down,” Ruby pleads. “We won’t get anywhere by yelling.”

Aaaand of course that does not work.

“Well, what do you suggest we do then?” Yang asks angrily.

Jaune is next. “Shouldn’t there be some kind of consequence for  _ more  _ lying?” 

Suddenly, everyone is talking over one another.

“We need to be rational about this!” Blake hisses.

“What is it with this group and lying all the time?” Weiss yells.

_ This… is not going well,  _ Ozpin remarks. 

Oh, how wonderful! Now the voice in his head wants to add to the clamour as well.

Oscar tries in vain to calm the group. “Can everybody just-”

Despite being flocked around him, yelling at Oscar and one another, no one is listening to the farmhand. He scrunches his head shut, holding his head in his hands. It’s loud, it’s too loud, why can’t everybody just-

“ **_STOP!”_ **

They all stop talking at once, deadly still and silent. 

_ Well, that certainly did the trick,  _ Oz comments. 

Oscar nods a bit and looks at his friends. They’re definitely quiet but they… aren’t even looking at him. They aren’t moving at all either. It’s like his friends are…

_ Frozen. _

“Yeah… this is weird, right? Oz?” Oscar asks. 

_ Yes, this is indeed odd. Team RWBY and their compatriots seem to be completely motionless and soundless. Check their vitals. _

Oscar bites his lip but stretches his hand out to Yang, who is closest to him. He places his fingers on her wrist, waiting for the telltale beat of her pulse.

It does not come.

Oscar’s own heart skips a beat and he inhales sharply. He can feel Oz’s own growing worry.  _ Keep going,  _ he commands.  _ Check her breathing, and the other’s too. _

Oscar looks at Yang’s stomach, waiting for it to move up and down. 

It does not.

He reels back, moving on to Weiss. His hazel-eyes blink uncertainly as he touches her wrist.

Just like Yang, no pulse. 

Oscar takes a step back, looking at the Huntresses and Huntsmen before him. They haven’t moved an inch, even as he watches their breathing (or, rather, lack of it) and checks their pulses. They are all as still as statues and lifeless as stones.

“Oz…” he begins, panic rising in his voice. “What’s going on? Are they okay? What happened?”

_ Oscar, stay calm,  _ Oz tells him.  _ This is not a normal occurrence. _

“Yeah, no duh,” Oscar mutters. 

_ I think I might have an idea, though. Would you mind checking the time? _

“The time? Uh, okay,” Oscar responds skeptically as he pulls out his scroll. He looks at the numbers, waiting for them to change as the next minute passes.

They do not.

“Okay, maybe it’s a glitch?”

Oscar turns it on and off again. Nothing has changed. 

_ Well, it appears that my theory might be correct. I advise you to check the other scrolls, just to be safe. _

Turning Jaune, Oscar picks the older boy’s scroll up out of his pocket. The numbers are the exact same. 

“Oz, what’s going on? Can you  _ please  _ stop being ominous and just tell me what’s happening?” Oscar pleads. 

_ Of course. I apologize. Well, you see, I believe that this was caused by you. _

“Me? What did I do?” Oscar protests.

_ I believe that time has been frozen. _

“Time has been- what? Oz, just get to the-”

_ I believe that you have unlocked your semblance and stopped time.  _

“Oh.”

There is a moment of silence as Oscar processes what the voice in his head has just told him. 

“Okay, okay, Oz- that’s crazy, isn’t it? I mean, I’d love to unlock my semblance but this can’t possibly be it. Or at least it’s not what you think it is. Stopping time? That’s literally insane!”

_ Odd, but not quite insane. Although I have never met someone with such an ability, I have heard tales of people with the ability to rewind a few seconds of time or stop objects from being affected by time. However, an ability to completely stop time is… rather unheard of.  _

“And you think I have this legendary, mythical ability to make time stop that might not even be real?”

_ That’s correct. _

“Ah,” Oscar blinks. “Just checking.”

They lapse into quiet. It’s funny, Oscar realizes, that there can be awkward silence with a voice in your head. 

“So… what do we do now?” He asks.

_ I suppose that we figure out how to undo whatever it is that you have done,  _ Oz muses.  _ Congratulations, though.  _

Oscar laughs. “Thanks. But… if you’ve never seen anything like this before, and I have absolutely no clue what I’m doing, then how will we fix this?”

Ozpin hesitates for a moment before responding.  _ That… is an excellent question. I do not know. Obviously _

Oscar groans. “Great! So now I have this crazy awesome, insanely powerful, and stupidly dangerous semblance that I have NO IDEA HOW TO USE!”

_ Yes, that would be a fair assessment.  _

Oscar sighed, sitting down against the wall. “Do you think we should just wait it out? Maybe it’ll wear off?” 

_ We could try, but I am unsure as to how well that would work. Your ability appears to be stopping time. We do not yet know how it functions: if it only stops for a little while, or if it will last as long as you let it. We do not know how much aura it takes from you either. It is possible that the action of stopping time is the only thing that takes from your aura, but we cannot rule out the possibility that having frozen time will slowly drain your aura until there is nothing left, and only then will time unfreeze. _

“Well. Okay then. So… you got any bright ideas?”

_ …No.  _

“That’s what I thought.”

_ I suppose we’ll have to wait after all.  _

Oscar lets out another long sigh. “Wonderful.”

_ Well, if we’re going to wait, we might as well talk about something productive.  _

_  
_ “....Like?”

_ What did you talk about back home? _

“Aren’t you in my head? Why can you just check?” Oscar replies sulkily. 

_I may be able to access your memories, but that does not mean that I rifle through them whenever I desire. At the very least, I have_ _respect for other people’s privacy and… secrets._

Oscar huffs. Ozpin… has a point. What they did back then was… wrong. He, Oscar was wrong to invade Ozpin’s privacy like that. He shouldn’t have lied to them, but he clearly had reason to. 

“I’m sorry, Oz. You shouldn’t have lied… but we were wrong too. I’m really sorry.”

_ I know, Oscar. Thank you for saying it, though. And... I’m sorry too. Not just for lying, but for what happened to you. _

Oscar wrinkles his nose. “To me?”

_ Yes, I am,  _ Oz continues.  _ I may not have been the one yelling at you or pushing you against walls, but it is my fault that your friends did that to you. I never should have lied, and then I never should have abandoned you.  _

Oscar thinks for a moment. “Okay. What you did… apologizing doesn’t make it okay. But I appreciate that you said sorry anyway.”

“I guess maybe I should work on an apology for when everyone gets unfrozen. Do you think that the time spent out of time will have changed their minds at all?”

_ Considering that whatever amount of time we are spending will feel and be like nothing at all to them, I highly doubt that a change of heart is forthcoming. _

“Yeah, figures.”

Oscar can feel Oz doing that “hmmmusemusemusethinkfancythoughts” thing that he does. He waits for him to finish.

_ These young people are astounding,  _ Oz says, and Oscar can feel his words directed at the Huntsmen and Huntresses standing frozen in front of them. 

“Yeah. They haven’t always been nice to me, and they aren’t perfect, but… they’re my friends.”

_ Friends? _

Oscar smiles briefly. “Family.”

_ You are truly lucky to be part of a family like this. You’ve built a home here, with these people,  _ Oz remarks.

“Well, there’s no place like home,” Oscar replies.

Suddenly, Oscar’s eyes are on fire.

Well, they probably aren’t on fire but they sure as hell feel like they are. His head is burning from the inside out, something is crushing his eyes and he can’t see but-

He can hear. When he had stopped time, the world had been devoid of all sound except for his own voice, but now the yelling from before it back.

No, the yelling is changing now. The voices, the voices of his friends who he would be so glad to hear again  _ if his eyeballs weren’t aflame right now  _ are growing softer, more worried and desperate than angry. 

“Oscar? Oscar, are you okay?” That’s Jaune’s voice!

Oscar lets out a shaky breath as the pain in his eyes fades, leaving him with nothing but a light tingling sensation as he removes his hands from where they were clutching his head. 

He looks up, his eyes meeting Jaune’s. The older boy blinks, in what Oscar thinks is shock, but cracks a grin and wraps his arms around Oscar. 

“You scared us for a second there. Don’t do that again, okay?” Jaune tells him. 

Oscar cocks his head to the side. “What do you mean?” A thought rises in his head. “Wait, were you not- nevermind, tell me what you’re talking about.”

Weiss interrupts. “Your eyes.”

“Your eyes… did something weird. They looked really strange for a minute or two, but… it just faded. A-And it looked like something was hurting you! Are you okay?” asks Jaune.

Oscar nods slowly. “Yeah, my eyes were really,  _ really  _ hurting for a bit. What was so weird about them?”

“You had like, gears or something in your eyeballs!” Nora exclaimed. 

“Like the ones on your- Oz’s cane!” Ruby adds.

Oscar reaches for the Long Memory, unclipping it and bringing it up in front of him. “My eyes… looked like this?” 

Oz responds with a sort of mental nods.  _ I believe so. Perhaps the clockwork effect and… pain in your eyes are a side effect of your semblance. And it appears that whatever you did a few minutes ago deactivated it. We still have much to learn, but you should probably start with telling them.  _

_ Ah, right,  _ Oscar thinks back at him.  _ That’s a good idea. _

The farm boy looks up again, to see everyone looking at him. Some of them appear purely concerned, like Blake and Ruby. Yang, Weiss, and Ren just look angry. Oscar had forgotten that it’s only been a few minutes for them. Jaune and Nora look conflicted. 

Oscar takes a deep breath. “Okay, so: I’m sorry for lying. I really am. I don’t even have a good excuse for why I did. All I can say is that I was scared that you’d react… well, like this. Last time Oz was here, you all got angry. And I got hurt. He shouldn’t have lied, and neither should I have, and you guys shouldn’t have been lied to. I’m sorry. And so is Oz.”

Yang sighs. “Thanks, Oscar.”

Ren nods, not meeting anyone's eyes. Oscar sees Ruby, Jaune and Weiss nodding along, Nora flashing him a small, weary smile. 

“It’s okay,” Blake murmurs.

Oscar lets out a breath that he didn’t know he was holding. “So, before this becomes yet another secret, I have something to tell you.”

His friends, whose faces have been changing, flashing from expression to expression and emotion to emotion all throughout his apology are now looking at him expectantly. 

“I unlocked my semblance.”

Ruby blinks. “Oscar- Oscar, that’s awesome! But, uh, when?”

Oscar scratches his head. “Uh. I’m not exactly sure. For you, it was a couple of minutes ago.”

“For us?” Ren asks.

“Uhm. Well. My semblance is kind of… rare? I guess?” Oscar tries.

He continues quickly, not at all liking the quizzical stares that he is receiving. “That’s what Oz told me at least. I’m not sure how to activate it. Or deactivate it, actually. Or honestly do anything with it.”

Weiss begins to speak. “Oscar-”

“I can stop time.”

She breaks off immediately. “You can  _ what?!?”  _

“I can stop time. I don’t know how, but before, when you were all yelling at me, I made time stop. You guys were all frozen for a while. Oz and I were talking, and then I unfroze it somehow. That’s why my eyes were hurting and doing that weird thing, I think. Probably side effects.” 

Oscar fiddles nervously as he waits for them to respond. 

Nora scoops him up into a gigantic hug that crushes his ribs. “THAT’S AWESOME!! YOU GOT LIKE, THE COOLEST SEMBLANCE EVER I’M SO PROUD OF YOUUUUUU!!”

Ren has to pry her off of him as Oscar gasps for breath. He cracks a small smile. “Congratulations, Oscar.”

Oscar is about to reply when he hears Yang yawn loudly. He swivels around just as she drops her arms down from a stretch. She grins like a madwoman. “You might have an awesome semblance, but to me, that means one thing.”

Oscar swallows.  _ Good luck with this one,  _ Oz chuckles.

Yang punches her fists together. 

“It’s time for training.”

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading! i might make a short part two where they train him. also remember to tell me if i have any typos or forgot to tag something, and feedback is always appreciated. [You can find me on twitter @ sapphicscarlett](https://twitter.com/sapphicscarlett), or you could talk to me on my [curiouscat](https://curiouscat.qa/sapphicscarlett)


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